Opinion: Australia is in a serious confrontation with China and doesn’t want to alienate the next rising great power as well, but this is the sort of thing it would do if it did, writes Peter Hartcher
Scott Morrison is not Donald Trump, but it’s the sort of controversy that Donald Trump would have loved to create. The Australian government not only shut the border to India last week, it also spelled out the warning that even returning Australian citizens could be jailed for five years for trying to get home.
But the decision to close the border was made on the advice of the chief medical officer, Dr Paul Kelly. Virk is a medical doctor himself. So what makes him think the decision is racist? “Because the US hasn’t done it, the UK hasn’t done it, Canada hasn’t done it, why are we doing it?” poses the chairman of the India Australia Strategic Alliance.
But too late. The government has managed to unite in outrage many civil society groups, Labor, some Nationals, plus the Greens, independents and even some Liberals, as well as the three-quarter million people of the Indian Australian community. And during the great Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, Morrison last year sent his best wishes to India and boasted that “Australia is the most successful multicultural nation in the world”. If he repeats the message this year, he risks being howled down.Australia is in a serious confrontation with China and doesn’t want to alienate the next rising great power as well, but this is the sort of thing it would do if it did.
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